well the phillies got bombed last nite 7-1 against the mets, cole hamels more less got booed off the mound by the 3rd inning, it maybe exciting to have those three great picture in that rotation, hamels is clearly the weak link, and has been for a few years now.

after one week, the orioles, royals and rangers lead the american leaguethe mets, reds, padres lead the national league.

Yup, that's exactly what happened. I think this year they have the smallest payroll in MLB. They can't fill the ball park (except when the NYY's or Red Sox come to town) and while they have a contract with the city of St Pete through 20something, they want a new ball park and are looking beyond St Pete.

i know on espn they talked alot about st pete and they would say it was in a bad part of town, where people normally do not go, now you can answer that question better, is that why people dont show up, and if so, did they have this problem when the stadium was built, or was this something new that came about?

Years ago, a core group of St pete folks thought a MLB team would do well in St Pete, so they built a domed stadium and pleaded with MLB to add an expansion team. MLB, looking to grow at the time, granted them a franchise.

The stadium is not located in a "bad" part of town. South St Pete would have been worse, but this is pretty centrally located near the downtown area.

Personally, I think the group of local supporters just plain oversold the area as a baseball town. We do have several teams that come to the area every year for spring training - Yankees, Phillies & Blue Jays. Those games are well attended (small venues), but a lot by the "snowbirds" who are down for the winter from the home cities of the 3 teams. Spring training attendance just didn't turn out to mean a "home team" would get the same kind of attendance. Heck, even in 2008, the year they went to the World Series against the Phillies, they had trouble filling the stands. Very few games were sold out that year.

The Buccaneers, with their NFL stadium in Tampa couldn't sell out a single home game last season so all home games were blacked out on local TV. That was mostly due to the bad economy, but the economy has also hurt the Rays, so It's been a double wammy for them.

Last year the Rays even moved their spring training from St Pete, south to Port Charlotte. What does that tell you?

They were already struggling before the economy went sour. It's just worse now. I don't see the Rays staying in St Pete. Tampa is interested, but is trying to stay low profile so it doesn't end up being a fight between 2 cities across the bay from each other.

well HH that was good insight to what is going on down there, the twins had that problem with their dome, nobody wanted to sit inside and watch a baseball game, especially when they have at least 6 good months of cold, now they have a open air stadium, seats around 40 thousand and they sell out every night now, instead of having 10-15 thousand people show up every night.

I don't know about sitting outside, in the sun or thunderstorms in St. Pete during the summer months. I think more fans (and players) would end up with heat stroke. Many games would be called for rain & lightening. We can get some real nasty, dangerous weather down here in the summer... not to mention hurricanes.

I don't think it's the domed stadium as much as the area. The "ticket-paying-fans" just aren't here like they thought they would be. I'm not sure they would do any better in Tampa.

I may be wrong about a domed stadium, but the only way to find out is to build them an outdoor ballpark and in this economy, the citizens don't want additional taxes to pay for it.

well i was glad that the mlb never retracted the twins and they rays, those are both worthy teams and the rays have proved it over the last few years building up a farm system,maybe if they built a new stadium they could build one with a retractable roof